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Consider this a treatise on how to gentrify. It's a
little on the long side so before you strain your eyes
reading off a computer screen you might want to press
your print button and grab a snifter of cognac, a good
cigar, and sit back for a lengthy read.
There is a beautiful old four story brownstone walkup
apartment building on the corner of Laurel Avenue and
N. 15th Street that within a few short years will be a
posh property in which to live.
For those unfamiliar with the Fifth Ward and this part
of downtown use these coordinates: One block north of
Hennepin Avenue behind the MCTC parking ramp just
across the street from the eastern boundary of Laurel
Village. It would be a great spot for a devout
Catholic as it is just one block east of the Basilica.
The property is owned by Laurel properties whose
listed CEO is a man named James Nordling. I've never
met Mr. Nordling. This is information I garnered from
the Secretary of State's office after running into a
dead end at the City Tax Assessor's office.
The estimated market value (emv) of the property as of
this year is $1,086,000. In 1998, the EMV was
$550,000. By '99 it had jumped to $695,000 and by '00
it was up to $868,000. These are pretty substantial
increases as anyone with the least mathematical skill
can tell you. And despite what Ms Becker might say in
her constant shilling for the Mayor, I would consider
this EMV to be jacked up.
The last time I was in this building was in 1992 when
I visited a friend who had moved there after her
divorce because it was an inexpensive place to live
where she could spread out and do her painting. She
basically rented a single large room and shared a bath
across the hall from her apartment with the other
tenants on her floor. This is a series of different
buildings so it was not as though there were 15
efficiencies sharing one bathroom but more like 5 or
6.
Currently a number of friends of mine from Ecuador who
work at the Loring Cafe in the back of the house live
in this building. I suspect that other immigrants
working in downtown restaurants live there as well. It
is still reasonably affordable and is a great location
for those who work downtown in lower paying jobs and
who could ill afford to pay heavy transportation costs
to commute to work.
Why i speak of this building is because yesterday
(Tuesday the 8th of May) I noticed an item on the
Zoning and Planning agenda that gave notification of a
public hearing that involved a small parcel of land
with a one story cinder block building on it just to
the north of the brownstone at 21 N. 15th Street.
A year ago I noticed this building and after checking
at the Tax Assessor's office found that MCDA had
fairly recently purchased the property. I envisioned a
perfect opportunity to build an addition to the
brownstone onto to this property for more affordable
housing.
A short time later I mentioned this piece of property
and the brownstone to CM Lisa Goodman whose gushing
reaction was "yeah, wouldn't that be a really great
building if it were fixed up." I thought to myself two
things: first, that it already was a great building,
and second, that this was a mighty strange reaction
from one who speaks so passionately for the homeless
and the need for affordable housing.
Uncharacteristically, I held my fire!
It was Cm Goodman who had wanted to expand the place I
live in, The Continental Hotel, in a similar manner to
what I envisioned for 1502 Laurel, in order to help
St. Thomas U. get around the sticky wicket they
encountered in planning for their new law school on
the MacPhail block. There was the minor problem of a
32 unit(?) apartment building with affordable rents
that would need to come down, a veritable no-no ( were
it really true) in the city. We see all the time how
the City Council finds ways to break their own highly
publicized rules meant to mollify the angry natives.
The plan that Cm Goodman put together at that time to
assuage her own conscience fell apart when the YWCA
would not heel to her demands that they sell part of
their property to CCHT who owns the Continental. I was
in Council chambers the Friday morning that Cm Goodman
lambasted the Y for being ungrateful at the largesse
of the city who had helped them build their new
Midtown branch. It was a real ghetto moment as my
friend David Wilson would say.
Now back to the parcel at 21 N. 15th St. and once
again please forgive my verbosity but this is a
complex story as so many are in the Naked City.
How you doing on that cognac?
The public hearing before Z&P was for the purpose of
considering an appeal of HFC,LLP. to block the
decision of the Board of Adjustment granting seven,
yes you heard me right, seven variances to Timothy
Rooney who wishes to build a 4 story, 3 unit apartment
building with roof top access and a six car tuck-under
garage. Mr. Rooney recently purchased the property
from MCDA.
HFC,LLP. is a limited partnership which owns a third
building (I said this was complex)to the north of the
other two properties. The general partner in HFC is
Daniel Commers and he runs a well maintained tight
ship that provides affordable housing.
On the face of it there ought not be a problem with
Mr. Rooney's plans. But there is. It is a significant
problem that we face in Minneaplis.
How do we reconcile the need to increase and grow our
tax base and still maintain affordable places for
everyday people like Russell Peterson and my buddy El
Tortuga to live? This story does not provide an answer
so much as it makes crystal clear the dilemma.
At yesterday's hearing, after both sides of the appeal
had made their presentations in Z&P, the only comments
before the vote came from CM Goodman. One remark of
hers was "this is exactly the sort of development we
need in downtown". She said it with a straight face. I
was watching on the hall monitor.
She spoke to how her neighbood group, CLPC I presume
(emphasis on the PC), or Citizens for the Loring Park
Community, met a number of times with the developer to
go over the plans and they wholeheartedly endorsed the
project as did she.
Cm Goodman reamed Mr.Commers good in a attempt to heap
public shame and abuse on him for "wanting to dictate
what was built on a property that he did not own" and
accusing him of secretly coveting the property
himself.
The irony of this was just too delicious to be true as
it was Ms Goodman, along with her bosom buddy Kim
Havey, another city employee working with the
Empowerment zone and the rest of their mostly white
clique in CLPC who denied HuntGregory Developers the
opportunity to build on the land at 13th and Harmon,
just a stone's throw away from 21 N 15th St and within
view of the back of the Bellevue building where Ms
Goodman and Mr. Havey live.
Their reasoning was that the proposed development was
out of character with the surrounding neighborhood and
was protected through the Harmon Area Zoning Overlay
that prescribes certain building heights. Mind you
this proposed building would have been across the
street from both the three story Haverhill building
and the twin Loring Green Towers and 110 Grant.
In essence, Ms Goodman and her merry band of
gentrifiers were basically trying to dictate what was
to be built on someone else's land just as she had
accused Mr. Commers.
Someone ought to point out to Ms Goodman that she
lives in a glass house. Oh! I guess I just did.
Were not all this as disturbing as it sounds, I'm
willing to bet money there weren't a lot of Ecuadorian
immigrants who will be living next to this new
building at 21 N. 15th St. present at the neighborhood
meetings and who have any inkling at what is about to
happen to their block.
There are rules for the granting of variances codified
in the Zoning Code. Section 525.500 entitled REQUIRED
FINDINGS reads: The Board of Adjustment shall not vary
the regulations of the Zoning Code, unless it shall
make EACH of the following findings based upon the
evidence presented to it in each specific case.
I'll not bore you (anymore than I have already) with
all five of the findings of hardship that would allow
for the granting of these variances when just one
ought to be sufficient. Consider if you will #4: "The
granting of the variance will not alter the essential
character of the locality OR be injurious to other
property in the vicinity in which the parcel of land
is located OR substantially diminish property values."
This proposed development will markedly alter the
essential nature of the locality. That in itself ought
to be enough to deny the variances on this property.
But in addition it will injure the other properties in
the vicinity in that it will drive even higher their
already swollen EMV's and change the very nature of
how they do business. This is the very essence of
gentrification.
Since I do not know Mr.Nordling I have no idea how he
may view this development. Maybe he abhors it but
since he has not appealed the granting of variances I
wonder if he might not be getting close to evicting
tenants and doing a makeover. Either that or he'll be
forced to raise rents higher or sell his property to
someone who will rehab the building. The writing's on
the wall, as they say.
This is essentially what I would have said at the
public hearing in Z&P yesterday had I been allowed to
speak. I misread the agenda and did not realize the
first three items were to be postponed and so I came a
few minutes late thinking I would be at the meeting in
plenty of time. What had held me up was that I was
quickly resurveying the property at 21 N. 15th St.
CM Lisa McDonald is the chair of Z&P and she rules
with a stopwatch and an iron fist. I hoped for
forbearance on her part but that well is mighty dry.
Fair enough. It's her committee. But this is a free
society and I get a chance to voice my opinion. If not
in committee, then here on this forum.
In the brief time this Mayoral campaign has been
going, formally and informally, I have heard enough
about Affordable Housing issues from the likes of Lisa
McDonald, R.T.Rybak, the Mayor and other challengers
as well as sitting Councilmembers to convince me that
not one of these people has any real understanding of
homelessness and the plight of the working poor. Even
those who like to trot out their 50's and 60's middle
class upbringings cannot relate to the economic
realities of today. For them a tough economic decision
might be whether to spend the extra $20 on the chrome
retro toaster at Crate and Barrel.
In yesterday's meeting Lisa Goodman who sits on the
City-County Homelessness and Affordable Housing Task
Force voted to deny the appeal and let the variances
stand. Jim Niland, another member of the same task
force and a main stategist for R.T.Rybak left the room
before the vote with pink message slips in hand. Dore
Mead who nominated R.T.Rybak at the DFL convention
voted to deny the appeal and Lisa McDonald who chairs
the committee voted to deny.
It seems like only yesterday that Lisa McDonald got up
before an audience at a pre-convention debate at
Whittier Park and spoke of how we needed to fight the
trend of gentrification. This coming from the same
mouth that uttered those immortal words "what Martha
Stewart did for the house, I want to do for the city"
nearly felled me from my chair in a paroxysm of
laughter. Lisa is also the person who quoted Mayor
Riley of Savannah,Georgia, I believe it is, and vowed
to not allow anything ugly to be built in the city.
Well if Tim Rooney is who I think he is Lisa might
want to pore over the architects drawings and specs
when they are finally completed. Imagine that! Issuing
variances and denying appeals without so much as a set
of finished drawings! I would harmly consider the
crumpled and creased paper Mr. Rooney held before the
committee as adequate renderings. Hmm!
Was it Tim Rooney who built those lovely condos half
way up the Kenwood Parkway hill on the north side next
to Karen Boros'? Those mighty erections fit into the
neighborhood about like a grapefruit fits in with a
bushel basket of carrots.
Now if for the last decade or more we had not been
bulldozing old properties and leaving vacant lots all
through wide sections of town, and if we hadn't just
bulldozed some already affordable housing in what our
planners refer to as the Humboldt Greenway, and if we
had not been boarding up countless other properties
and had let them sit vacant til they caught fire or
rotted from neglect, and if we hadn't seen a growth in
our city population among mostly poorer immigrants and
others seeking a brighter future than they saw staring
them in the faces in places like Gary and Hammond and
Chicago and Detroit, etc., and if during the "greatest
economic upsurge" in our country's recent history the
gulf between the rich and the poor had not grown ever
wider and deeper, and if politicians who make $60,000
and up didn't regard $9.02 as a livable wage instead
of a laughable wage, and if a hundred other things
that have occurred had not happened over the past ten
years, THEN, and only then. this might be a decent
project.
As it is, the decision to grant these variances on
this particular property at this time and to deny the
appeal of HFC,LLP. is a shameful act nearly equal to
our Mayor's decision to tear down Sumner Olson project
in the midst of a housing crisis with no reasonable
alternative place to live for the displaced tenants
and the foot-dragging shenanigans in implementing the
other big, though rapidaly diminishing, gentrification
project on the Near Northside.
This is another attempt to pay for the excesses of the
current and past administrations and fill the baggy
pockets of greedy developers devoid of good conscience
by stepping on the backs of the working poor and
unsuspecting immigrants. And as Lisa McDonald likes to
preach, without her own adherence I might add, it's
bad business. She should listen to herself as should
the other candidates.
Shame on them!
Tim Connolly
Ward 7
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